Exclusive: Charlamagne Tha God talks new format for talk show Hell of A Week with Charlamagne tha God
In last night’s episode of Hell of A Week with Charlamagne Tha God, which airs at 11:00 pm ET on Comedy Central on Thursday nights, Issa Rae was a featured guest and discussed her thoughts on the HBO Max and Discovery+ merger. Charlamagne also called for the FBI to dig up Ivanna Trump’s grave. He discussed toxic masculinity and freeing black and brown inmates with non-violent marijuana charges with a guest panel that included Flame Monroe, Gary Owen, and Council Member Chi Osse.
Nothing is off-limits on this late-night talk show as Lenard "Charlamagne" McKelvey invites unlikely pairings of notable comedians and guests across the political spectrum to debate current events permeating politics and culture.
Blackfilmandtv.com caught up with Charlamagne to discuss the latest changes to the show, which used to be called Tha God's Honest Truth.
At what point you knew you wanted to change the format?
Charlamagne Tha God: Oh, man, I knew that last season. The beauty of being on Comedy Central, being with Viacom, we were experimenting, and when we had the leeway to do that, I have to thank Chris McCarthy. He was just like, “experiment, try things, see what feels good.” And for me, it's always difficult when it comes to format, because everything I do is always so loose. Whether it's for Breakfast Club, whether it's the podcast with Andrew Schultz. How do you create that energy on television? It's always about community. I love sitting down, having conversations with people. I love sitting down, kicking it, like we were doing at the table in a group setting with everybody throwing opinions on each other. That's what I love. That's what I thrive in. We knew it last season, and once we got the opportunity to get to season two, that's what we wanted to do from the beginning.
When do you start coming up with the topics you want to discuss? From Sunday to Thursday morning before taping?
Charlamagne Tha God: That's it. That's literally it. Sunday from Thursday morning. Really Friday, because we're on the air on Thursdays. So Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, leading up to up until Thursday morning, where picking the topics is nothing evergreen. Everything is really, really topical. It’s things that are in the news. Even with the segment we did about the bugs that was more so about climate change, than it was the bugs. Let's start really paying attention to climate change and really see what's happening in our society. So, yeah, we do it up until the minute.
What goes into picking the guests you want on the show?
Charlamagne Tha God: It’s a committee. We got a great team. Rachael Edwards is my showrunner. Josh Lee is one of my executive producers. We sit around and kick it with all the writers. We just ask questions like, “What do you think of this person?” There’s certain people I know I want to talk to. I wanted comic Andrew Schulz on my first episode. That's my guy. I already know what Andrew is gonna do. With political strategist Lis Smith and writer Coleman Hughes, I never have met them. I hadn't met Liz, but I didn't know Liz was a commentator, and she was great. You got to trust your team, and we got to trust each other. I'm not trying to pick everybody on the panel. I just know that one person that I want to have on every week, because I know that they will really bring it in a real way.